


if how we're loved is how we're made, well

by PaxDuane



Series: lift your glasses full of sunshine [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss
Genre: Age Difference, Developing Relationship, M/M, Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Pre-Relationship, Underage Kissing, brief Jango Fett, brief OCs - Freeform, taking repcomm characters and ignoring their characterization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29168985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxDuane/pseuds/PaxDuane
Summary: then we are made from my head and your heart--Bowerbirdby Molly ofGeographyThings change.Here is love requited, the galaxy whispers, as love must flee.Here is love kept, the galaxy whispers, as he comes home after that home has been gone for nearly three years.Here is what could have been, the galaxy whispers, where no resentment there can be.Mij Gilamar still thinks through his choices as "me and Sabine" instead of "me." It's kept him making good ones, he thinks.Especially when every time he looks at Spar, he thinks of how much Sabine would have loved him too.
Relationships: Alpha-Ø2 | Spar/Mij Gilamar
Series: lift your glasses full of sunshine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144181
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	if how we're loved is how we're made, well

**Author's Note:**

> While Spar is still the equivalent of 17, they kiss four times, all chaste and relatively quick. 
> 
> If you have issues we needles, there's a shot described near the end of the main section of the fic. It starts with **Spar follows sedately** and ends with **smooth on over the pinprick.** It's all one paragraph.
> 
> [ Theme song here!!! ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-fMk1MjvBc)

“Hey, Baar’ur?”

Mij looks up and smiles softly at Spar, who stands in the doorway to the infirmary. The teenager spends what he and Jango both think is a little too much time in the infirmary, with issues with migraines that both of them worry will catch the attention of the Kaminiise. At this rate, Jango might have to get Spar off Kamino—he’s well enough to fight with regular medication, would do well if they were on a Mandalore that didn’t ban armor, but they’re not even the current Mandalore. “What’s wrong this time?” he asks, keeping his tone light and only an edge teasing.

Spar glances behind him, then steps further into the infirmary. He’s...nervous?

“What’s going on?” Mij leans against his desk.

“I, uh. I needed to talk to you.”

Mij frowns. “Are the migraines getting worse?” Jango’s finally gotten hold of enough medication on his trips off Kamino that the stuff they’ve found that works can be administered more often. It’s still not as often as either of them wish, but...

Spar winces. “Not...really? They’re still bad, but. That’s not what I need to talk to you about.”

“Well?”

“I... It’s hard.” Spar glances back at the door again, biting his lip. “Bajir said the other Gilamars agreed to take me, between now and...whenever everyone can leave.”

“Elek. He probably told them I’m alive, which is good for getting back in their good graces when that day comes.” He ducks his head, a little. Sabine Gilamar was someone he’d fallen head over heels for, enough to become Mandalorian himself even if her family would never have pressured him to for them to get married. The Gilamars had adopted him, kept him even after Sabine had been killed holding off Death Watch from his clinic as he patched up a few of their victims and got them out—they’d take great care of Spar. And he’ll get to see him again, that way.

When Spar was younger, before the headaches that eventually turned to migraines, he was precisely the kind of little boy Sabine would have adored to have. Now, though, Mij somewhat suspects he’s become someone she’d have invited in, like they’d talked about a few times in the months before her death. He’d become someone that he could have seen wrestling and tumbling with her while he cooked, or someone who Mij would have been dragged in to mediate a debate that was less a debate or argument and more a move towards a nice, big bed that would fit all three of them. A bed that’s still in his house, if the Gilamars haven’t just moved everything back onto their compound.

“They’ll love you,” he adds, smiling at him. The jump in height that has put all of the Alphas officially above Jango with at least one more spurt to go has made them eye level. He suspects he’ll be looking up at him, the next time he sees him.

Spar stares at him. “I...oh. Good.”

“’Lek, you don’t have anything to worry about. They’ll take care of you.”

Spar ducks his head, shuffles his feet. “Baar’ur—Mij.”

It’s like his eyes sharpen, on him. He’s assured Spar he can use his given name, doesn’t have to call him Baar’ur or Gilamar, but the young man has never taken him up on it. Something...there’s been some kind of shift.

And he knows what it is when Spar leans forward, awkward and clumsy as he presses their lips together.

He’s never mentioned any of the changes in his own mental catagorizing of him, has tried to keep his mood warm in front the young man but not anything further than the very tamest of what could have been’s.

He catches Spar’s sleeve, close to the shoulder, and kisses back, soft, warm, leading him to something a little more comfortable for both of them. When he pulls back, he asks, “Are you leaving today or tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, early.” Spar’s flushed, though it barely shows, except at the tips of his ears. “I...Technically, Bajir sent me to get my meds.”

“Of course.” He smooths his hands soothingly down the sides of Spar’s arms.

“And...he said something about an injection?”

It takes Mij a moment to parse that before he snaps over to the medication chiller. Jango had asked him to get it ready. He brings out the cool syringe and sets it on his desk, setting a timer on his datapad. “It needs about thirty...minutes...” Mij looks up at him from where he’s just straightening back up over the desk. “Before I can give it to you. It’ll result in injection site redness, maybe a little pain or fever within the first cycle.”

“What’s it for?” Spar asks.

“Oh. It. It will slow your aging down. It took us a while to figure out the formula...sadly on clones who were going towards decommissioning. Now that we know it, though, we’ve been trying to get them out.” He looks up at him and feels the weight of the difference in their ages. Sure, Mando’ade Spar’s age are usually, used to be, tested in battle and more confident. Relationships develop and sometimes even relationships with older Mando’ade, though it is far more common for it to be triad relationships or bigger webs. “You’ll be...properly seventeen.”

“And...when you come?” Spar asks. “I’ll be how old?”

It will be a whole new system of aging that he’ll have to get used to.

“Eighteen, halfway to nineteen.”

“But if I didn’t take it, I’d be twenty. That much closer.”

“I can’t guarantee I can make this properly outside of Kamino’s labs,” Mij says. “I won’t risk it. Some of your brothers you’ll probably meet are much younger just because they’ve had the cure longer.”

Spar looks at the syringe. “You really want me to?”

“For you, I want you to. For you, Jango wants you to.” He reaches out and cups the sides of Spar’s face. This is familiar, to them, but now there’s an extra charge from the...confession? as it were. “By the time I get there, you might well have found a Mando’ad closer to your age who’s caught your eye.”

“Don’t say that,” Spar begs, hands coming up to Mij’s wrists. “I...I don’t want to leave without you.”

Mij catches him by the back of the neck, scruffs him a little like a tooka kit, and pulls him in for a few calming moments in Keldabe. Then, once the minute shakes in Spar’s neck and face calm, he kisses him again, soft and chaste. “Would you forgive me if I left your fellows to have only the Kaminiise as their doctors?”

That makes Spar reel back. “No!” he says, horrified, but it sinks in and, as it does, his shoulders fall. “Oh.”

“My contract is up once the Republic takes over control. They’ll probably have a few of us stay on as trainers and a few to work as consultants to the army.”

Spar swallows visibly. “So...”

“As soon as I can,” he promises. “I’ll come to Abeshkelda and find you. I hope it will be right after the Republic takes control, but I might be required to be part of the transition process. But as soon as I can, I’ll find you, and we’ll...we’ll really talk about this.”

Spar nods, almost huddled against him. Mij briefly squeezes his neck.

“Live free, round up some of the others, make some friends.” He pauses as the timer goes off. “Come here and sit down.”

Spar follows sedately, settling into Mij’s own chair and rolling up his sleeve while Mij puts on a pair of disposable gloves. Mij swabs the injection sight with an alcohol soaked polycotton ball then, holding the area taught with his fingers, inserts the needle and slowly pushes down the plunger of the syringe, watching Spar’s face for any discomfort. It’s only when it’s almost done that the young man’s face twists with discomfort. He rubs soothing circles into his skin with his thumb. “Almost done.” The plunger hits closed and the spring mechanism cleanly pulls the needle back out, ready for the syringe to be dropped into hazardous waste. He presses a new soaked swab against the injection site while he rids himself of the syringe, then digs a bandaplast from his desk to smooth on over the pinprick.

Spar lets his sleeve fall back down. “I didn’t want to go without...letting you know.”

“You should have waited,” Mij says, though he doesn’t want it himself. He wants to know there’s a possibility he’ll come home and Spar will have waited for him. “So if you change your mind...”

“I won’t,” Spar says hotly, stubborn as always.

Mij leans down to kiss him again. “I’ll get the med bottles together in a bag. Sit here, I want to be by you when you stand, if you get dizzy.”

Spar complies while Mij bustles around, collecting the bottles he’s hidden away and finding a white paper bag of the kind he uses to deliver medicine to the other trainers. Once the bottles are in, he folds up the top of the bag and hands it over, hovering as Spar gets to his feet.

At the door, before Spar can leave, he says, “If the fever continues longer than a couple hours, you’ll need fluids. Jango knows the drill but you’ll need to tell him. By the time you get into Keldabe, you’ll either be fine or still stable enough that if you get into a doctor right away, you will be fine... And, because you’ll here it so much, let me be the first to say that Sabine would have loved you.” And he kisses him one last time, possibly _the_ last time. “Ret'urcye mhi.”

“Ret'urcye mhi, Mij,” Spar murmurs.

He turns and goes, standing strong and solid as he leaves the infirmary to march through the halls, back to Jango’s apartment.

He doesn’t look back, and Mij hates that he doesn’t and is so glad that he doesn’t.

***

Jango has been the one to keep in touch with the clones smuggled off of Kamino, so when he offers to get Mij to Abeshkelda, after they all finalize the different further contracts with the Republic, he’s only a little suspicious.

The Slave I settles down in Keldabe, then they meet a Gilamar clanmember with a speeder who takes them into town, all the way to the compound.

“I’ll go see the kids and talk to Spirba. Go,” Jango says as they climb out, motioning to one of the outer buildings that’s still in the collection of homes.

Mij eyes it suspiciously. “Jango...”

“Go, he’s waiting.”

Mij curses quietly. “Really?” he means it more that Jango’s continuing to butt in, had all through he and Sabine’s courtship as only a protective older cousin that he was treated as could. Jango’d also been the one, scowling and grouchy as usual, to drag him through his verdgoten. And, he supposed, Jango had dragged Spar through that too.

He hikes across the compound to the suggested house and it opens as he comes up the walk.

Spar rockets toward him, taller by an inch and broader in the shoulders but still flinging his arms around Mij’s neck like they’re the same size.

Mij laughs and catches his face with his hands, smiles at him until Spar surges forward to kiss him.

“You made me wait a year,” the young man murmurs. “I’m closer to twenty now.”

“The Republic had a million and one hoops to jump through,” he grosses back. “Including a months long trial run while we worked with the Jedi on strike team composition. Jango was close to committing murder three times a week, which we’re all very proud of his control with.”

Spar cracks a smile of his own.

“And, I’m here until your birthday. Spir’bu would have had my head if I hadn’t made that work out.”

Spar breathes with him. “So, we talk about it.”

“We talk about it,” Mij agrees, “With Spir’bu and Jango mediating. And then, in and out of the war, I’ll come to court you.”

Spar nods, then looks back at the little house. “I...”

“Next time, maybe,” Mij tells him. “It’s your home. By the time it might become ours, I hope I’ll be ready to set up a new clinic in Keldabe. So, we’ll have to move. And that home will be our home.”

“And then...and then you won’t leave me again?” Spar murmurs, face tucked into Mij's neck.

"Ka'ra, no," Mij says, squeezing the young man's waist. He catches Spar's cheek in the cup of his palm. "No, then I will never leave you again."

Spar kisses him, more confident than that first time so long ago and longer than how they'd greeted each other. "Good," he says, when he pulls away. His voice sounds wrecked.

Mij reaches up and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Sabine~~~ Was talking with elouanwrites about her and this and the cultural implications in all of this story, so that's going down here.
> 
> Cultural wiggle room, as briefly touched on: Like, by 15-16 most Mandos are exploring their sexuality and getting into relationships with agemates. Usually if they're getting in with someone older it's an established couple who aren't _terribly_ older (around the end, development wise, Mij and Spar have about an 11 year difference, which is close to the top end but not at the top) and are watched like hawks. But it's also very much a community kind of situation that most parents would believe their child's much younger partner over their child if they came to them about abuse and that's only in familial compounds. If the group lives outside a familial compound, the cultural POV is that if someone you know comes to you about being in an abusive relationship, you tend to believe them. Or you _notice_ because the communities are very community oriented in different parts (especially agricultural).
> 
> Mij really does think about a lot of things, including this, in terms of "Sabine should have been part of this relationship too." Because even though she's dead he still sometimes thinks of himself in "me and Sabine" instead of just "me" especially since they'd briefly talked about this being a relationship dynamic they were interested in pursuing before she died, with the plan to look into it after returning from Kamino.
> 
> Returning from Kamino? you might ask. I'd say Mij and Sabine got married at 18 and Sabine was killed shortly before going to Kamino. Originally both of them were going to come, mainly knowing Jango because he and Sabine grew up with a kind of cousin like relationship (in this and a couple other stories I've not mentioned it in, Jango was fostered by the Gilamars after Jaster died and he was elected Mand'alor, but he still didn't get a ton of time with lil Sabine until he returned from being enslaved and then killing Tor Vizsla). 
> 
> Sabine is based on the fact that Mij had a Mandalorian wife in canon who brought him into the culture and was killed by Death Watch. I developed that, named her, and made it less "straight up murdered in cold blood" to "killed while defending Mij's clinic from them while Mij was patching up some of their victims and getting them to safety." Mij is still getting his revenge on those still alive with a scalpel at some point. 
> 
> Sabine was bright, cheerful, and VERY Mando, having the main driving force of personality in her and Mij's relationship. I'd like to think she was school friends with Ursa Wren and frenemies with Bo-Katan Kryze, despite their political differences. Ursa still had a soft spot for her and named Sabine Wren after her. 
> 
> I also decided that Gilamar would be her clan name and Mij took it when they got married / because the clan adopted him when he became Mandalorian. Which is why he's still part of the clan and a new relationship isn't seen as a betrayal by them. Especially because they do indeed adore Spar.
> 
> Spirba Gilamar is the matriarch, who was somewhere between sister and foster mother to Jango growing up. By adoption, she's Mij's buir. She's heavy infantry by the way. She and Jango are basically going to stand as advocates for Spar in the discussion of how his and Mij's courting process will go. Jango _is_ more teacher than parent to Spar but he's also technically the legal guardian of all of the clones currently on Mandalore, though temporary guardianship is shifted to whoever they usually stay with.


End file.
